Saturday, February 07, 2009

US Warns UK About Release Torture Info

I'm still not liking the press in the US. WA Today (that's Western Australia) reports Letters prove US warning.

"A FLURRY of letters between the British Foreign Office and the US State Department has revealed that Washington did threaten to withdraw intelligence-sharing with Britain if documents related to the alleged torture of a British terrorism detainee in Guantanamo Bay were made public.

The High Court in London said on Wednesday the Foreign Office had refused to allow the torture documents to be revealed because of a "threat" from Washington to stop sharing intelligence with Britain.

The US warning, related to the case of British detainee Binyam Mohamed, was promptly denied by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who insisted that there had been no threat from the US to "break off intelligence co-operation".

But on Thursday night British broadcaster Channel 4 revealed that a letter dated August 21, 2008, from the US State Department, stated the consequences if a British court published American documents on the capture and interrogation of Mohamed."

The Telegraph in the UK reported UK government suppressed evidence on Binyam Mohamed torture because MI6 helped his interrogators.

"Mr Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian, was granted refugee status in Britain in 1994. He was picked up in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, rendered to Morocco and Afghanistan, tortured and then sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2004. All terror charges against him were dropped last year." 25 lines were edited out of the court papers describing the torture, the article mentions a little of it and it makes waterboarding look taking a hot tub.

A quick search of Google News didn't find American papers reporting this except for (of course) McClatchy, Why did Obama back Bush demand for British secrecy? See, Obama apparently hasn't changed the Bush policy of wanting to keep this secret and it came up in Hillary's visit to London this week. Ugh.

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